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H. P. Lovecraft – “The Shadow Out of Time” (1936)

The Shadow Out of Time is a novella by American horror fiction writer H. P. Lovecraft. Written between November 1934 and February 1935, it was first published in the June 1936 issue of Astounding Stories. Lovecraft critic Lin Carter calls The Shadow Out of Time Lovecraft’s “single greatest achievement in fiction”, citing “its amazing scope and sense of cosmic immensitude, the gulfs of time it opens, [and] the titanic sweep of the narrative”, while horror author and critic Ramsey Campbell describes it as “awe-inspiring”. (Wikipedia)

My name is Nathaniel Wingate Peaslee, and those who recall the newspaper tales of a generation back — or the letters and articles in psychological journals six or seven years ago — will know who and what I am. The press was filled with the details of my strange amnesia in 1908-13, and much was made of the traditions of horror, madness, and witchcraft which lurked behind the ancient Massachusetts town then and now forming my place of residence. Yet I would have it known that there is nothing whatever of the mad or sinister in my heredity and early life. This is a highly important fact in view of the shadow which fell so suddenly upon me from outside sources.

It may be that centuries of dark brooding had given to crumbling, whisper-haunted Arkham a peculiar vulnerability as regards such shadows — though even this seems doubtful in the light of those other cases which I later came to study. But the chief point is that my own ancestry and background are altogether normal. What came, came from somewhere else — where I even now hesitate to assert in plain words.